


Kiss Me Karen

by fiveminutespond



Category: Doctor Who RPF
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-28
Updated: 2013-12-14
Packaged: 2017-12-21 16:33:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/902460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fiveminutespond/pseuds/fiveminutespond
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>1948. Post-war NYC. Repetition and monotony broken by the bright lights of the stage. But that wasn’t why he came back every night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Another Opening, Another Show

Many people say that the buzz of a crowd on Opening Night is music to the ears.  
That it fuels the heart and puts the brain on a high, an irresistible drug wearing off only after a few drinks in the early hours of the morning. A cure for the nerves, the engine for the act, and only a select few got to experience it. In short, it was exhilarating.

It just made Karen feel sick.

As she waited in the wings, she smoothed the front of her costume, attempting to give herself something to do. Feeble as it was, Karen found it addicting. She kept fidgeting with her dress until her costar punched her shoulder. 

“Stop it,” he said. “We’re on in a bit.”

Right on cue, the director came into the wings and bid them good luck. He was a rather portly man, but tonight he was wearing tails that, surprisingly, flattered him. The man smoked a pipe that never seemed to run out.

Karen’s first ever show was a small production of Anything Goes, which barely ten years old at the time. Nearly five years later, Karen had landed a spot in a Porter show as Lois Lane. Her fellow cast members often teased that she was accepted accidentally, due to her lack of experience. She wouldn’t be surprised if her director broke that news. Karen was never used to being in the spotlight, but Kiss Me, Kate, provided her with a couple of solos and a lot of stage time to expand her horizons. 

Karen faced the stage again and took a few deep breaths. She ran over her tap piece for “Too Darn Hot” in her head, tapping on her abdomen with her hands. The overture started and Karen gasped. 

\---

She flew through the show.   
Karen had drank the Kool Aid and floated through the whole performance. It was only during curtain call when she realized that people were standing up.

Kiss Me, Kate was never supposed to be a hit, at least not by Broadway’s standards. Karen has assumed it would flop, but, for some reason, she had more pride in herself and her cast than she initially expressed, and the standing ovation vindicated her thoughts.

She noticed the man near the front who had stood up first. He was wearing his hat inside the theatre, which made Karen want to puke. But, he was the one paying her, so she couldn’t do anything. She accepted the applause with a bow, and waved as the curtains closed.

Backstage, the cast sat together, still in costume, taking a smoke and having a beer in celebration. In the show, everyone was referred to by his or her role.

Unfortunately, the other actors in the show had many years of experience in theatre, which they often held against her. Unless you got them drunk enough, in which case they were quite kind.

“Lois,” Bill said, handing Karen another beer, “you had an admirer in that audience tonight.”

“Don’t fool around,” she replied.

“Yeah,” Lilli confirmed. “He was in the third row. Wore some stupid-ass hat the whole time. Thought I was going to go down there and rip it off his snide head.”

“He left you a note,” Bill said, handing Karen a receipt with some scrawled writing on the back. “I nearly forgot.”

I’m not a Tom, Dick, or Harry. My apologies.

“Goddammit, Lois,” Fred said. “How cheesy can the guy get? Actually, I bet you’ll be having loads of these by the time this show’s over.”

“Jealous?” Karen asked, teasing. She folded the note and tucked it in her shoe. 

“A bit,” Fred replied, smirking. “Seriously! You’re Scottish! And a ginger!”

“Hey, shut up,” Arthur interjected. Being the stage manager, he was excluded from the nickname game.

“Mr. Stranger is probably ginger, too,” Karen said, pitching in on her own humiliation.

They quickly moved on from the subject and drank until one in the morning, when Arthur walked Karen back to her apartment above a small stationary shop, where she bid him goodbye. They were the two misfits of the cast, their accents and relative inexperience with the theatre setting them apart from the others. Naturally, they had become best friends. 

Once Arthur had left, Karen pulled the note out from her jacket, where she had carefully hid it after getting out of costume. She examined the front of the receipt. It was from a coffee shop on Fifth Avenue, one that Karen knew was wedged in between the De Pinna and the Arnold Constable.

Thinking nothing more of the café, Karen tucked the receipt away in her vanity set. She went to sleep that night with an itchy nose and a strange sense of fulfillment.


	2. So In Love

Call him a fanatic, but Matt loved the theatre.

 

Perhaps it was the curtains. They brought a sense of welcoming and finality to the show.

 

Or maybe it was the music, which could invade his brain faster than alcohol.

 

But, in the end, Matt had fallen in love with the people. The actors did their role, fueling the crowd, who fueled the actors, who fueled the crowd, who repeated the vicious cycle until the curtains dropped for the last time every night. The repetition was almost soothing, as chaotic as the pattern could get.

 

So when a tall, leggy ginger happened to tread upon it, Matt couldn’t help but get his breath taken away. Initially, the audience wouldn’t applaud for her. They wouldn’t whoop, or holler, or respond at all.

 

A leggy ginger should not be allowed to tap.

 

The girl playing Lois was the best tapper Matt had seen in his time on Broadway. Hell, Matt had never been in any show, but he knew more about each one than the actors did. And he knew that this girl was rare.

 

She left the audience speechless every time she finished a routine, her smile flashing like the shining shoes of her trade. So what could Matt do but go back every night?

 

He talked to the theatre’s owner, who reserved a seat for him. Third row, 34th seat, the far side of Stage Right. His view of her was flawless.

 

Matt kept his hair tucked up in a bowler hat, which he often forgot to remove when entering the theatre. He assumed that it wasn’t a problem after a while, as no one approached him about it. He would just sit quietly, his gaze reserved for Lois.

 

He had sent her a note on Opening Night, an afterthought, scribbled on the back of a receipt. It was on the fourth or fifth showing when Matt got a response.

 

Lois had kept the receipt and written back on a piece of faintly blue paper.

_I’m afraid you’ll never do, then._

Matt grinned and wrote a response on the back.

 

_But, darling, I’m always true to you in my fashion._

He handed it to the theatre’s owner, who handed it right back. “You better meet the Stage Manager because I ain’t delivering letters for you no more. Once was enough.”

 

Matt was introduced to Arthur, a shy, bumbling lad with a similar accent to his own, and was relieved of the note without fuss.

 

The show breezed by, and Matt led the standing ovation as he always had. The last five nights were both a second and a lifetime, which confused him beyond belief. Matt had never been as confounded and entranced by any human being.

 

It also occurred to him that he hadn’t even bothered to learn her name.

 

Fortunately, the perks of being an audience member involved the oblivion of the personal lives of the actors. Matt could blissfully stare at her for performance after performance, indifferent to her life and her relationship status.

 

But just because he could didn’t mean that he would.

 

Matt received a note from Arthur at the end of the show, written on the back of a worn price tag.

 

_Karen._

\---

 

Her name rang through his head during work the next day, echoing like church bells, joyous and realized. The thought of her kept Matt’s brain out of the swirling bowl of work dramatics. Spending the late hours of the morning and the earlier ones of the afternoon in a cluttered office surrounded by papers wasn’t really Matt’s idea of fun. Being a publicist was probably one of the least glamorous jobs in New York, yet it had been a dream of his to become one. Following ambitions never quite seemed to work out for Matt, even when they were achieved. For instance, when Matt was seven, he saved up for a new bike, which he managed to purchase after months without ice cream. However, the bike broke after the shop had closed down, leaving Matt penniless and heartbroken.  There was something about achieving a goal that seemed to always let him down. Karen’s job seemed to be much more rewarding than any other.

After another day being drowned in his words, Matt made his way to the theatre, not minding his earliness. Arthur handed him a note as he sat down in his usual seat.

 

_And you didn’t decide to tell me yours?_

_Shit,_ Matt thought, still admiring the note. Karen had used proper paper this time, and her handwriting flowed effortlessly across the page. Matt scribbled his name in writing quite the opposite of hers and handed it back to Arthur.

 

He rolled his eyes, taking the note. “You know you can just come back to the stage door and actually _talk_ to her, right?”

 

Matt had been so absorbed with Karen’s enigma that he had forgotten about her tangibility. “Oh, uh, yeah, sorry, uh, thanks.”

 

\---

 

Matt bent down to collect his coat as the curtains closed, making a dent in the wave of the standing and applauding people. He reached for his hat before remembering its clingy attachment to his head and unwillingness to depart from it. Matt left the theatre in a hurry to get to the stage door before the crowds arrived.

 

Standing at the front, Matt knocked. He was in solitude. The city seemed to be very quiet, but perhaps the nerves slowly taking over his body muffled the sound. There were more important things right now than drunk men and smoky cars.

 

The door opened, and a woman stuck her head out. Smirking, she opened it wider and called back into the theatre.

 

“Lois! Your friend is here!”

 

_Friend?_

Matt began to panic. _We’ve never even met, and she considers me her friend?_

“Goddammit Lilli,” said a voice. “I’ve never even met him.”

 

_They’d been talking about him._

The door’s ownership changed hands, and Matt was overcome with a bursting sensation. It was as if every particle of his body was screaming to get out, but the fear and the nerves and the desire for sanity held him back.

“Hello?” Karen said to him. “You here for signings?”

 

_She was Scottish. Holy shite, she was Scottish and sexy and ginger and leggy and—_

“Uh- um, Matt,” he said shakily, holding out his hand and smiling weakly.

 

A look of understanding dawned on Karen’s face. “Ah,” she said, accepting the handshake. “You’ve been here every night. We’ve been—“

 

“Yeah,” Matt interrupted, laughing a bit. “Yeah, that’s me.”

 

“It’s, wow, it’s really nice to, uh, to finally meet you.”

 

“Yeah,” Matt responded. He mentally kicked himself for his constant affirmations.

 

“Well, I, uh.” Matt noticed that Karen was staring straight at him. She looked like a deer in headlights. “I, uh, have to do autographs, but, um, lovely to meet you!”

 

“Yeah, you too.”

 

 _Shit,_ Matt thought, walking away. _I’ve done it._


End file.
